Twelve Publishers

Dear Reader,
Despite being one of the most prominent public intellectuals of our time, Christopher Hitchens has written relatively little about the private dimensions of his life—his parents, his education, the evolution of his political consciousness, his dualities and contradictions. As he was approaching his sixtieth birthday, Christopher decided to tackle those subjects in the first memoir of his career, Hitch-22.

He is English-born and American by adoption, all atheist and partly Jewish, a disciplined bohemian. He has long been consumed by a love of literature and a hatred of tyranny. Here he discusses his famously unbending convictions, tracing the thread of principle that connects his opposition to war in Vietnam and his support for intervention in Iraq.

He offers an intimate glimpse of his friendships with some of the finest writers of our time: Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Edward Said, and James Fenton, among others. With no shortage of asides—involving persons as diverse as Ted Hughes, Jorge Borges, and Margaret Thatcher (whom he memorably described as “sexy”)—he relates a transatlantic journey of artistry, productivity, and passion. A portrait of a personal life lived in a very public way, Hitch-22 captures the calamities, contradictions, and curiosities of a multitudinous personality.